Fresh energy surging through me, I spread my wings wide. Blue energy blazes into being around my fists. “Then let’s make sure we win,” I say, even as we split apart, diving headlong back into the tumult.
My whole world again becomes the battle haze of discharged weapons, beating wings, and frantically firing dayfolk. In my peripheral vision, I catch snatches of my new allies, formerly my foes, fighting with all they’re worth to stop Thaane’s invaders.
Eridian, blasting slugs of freezeshot clean through rib cages.
Lail, simultaneously holding three opponents aloft, her many arms crushing enemy windpipes—alongside the seventh hand at the apex of her tail.
Neo, unleashing waves of overcharged telekinesis that reach as far as thought. Soldiers collapse in heaps before him, lay down their weapons, and even wail as their own will to fight is exorcised by someone else’s mind. He may not be a soldier proper, but he’s quite possibly the best we have.
And Azarii, darting deftly through the skies, launching blasts of gifted energy at the scrambling soldiers below. Amidst the fighting, our gazes lock. There is no exchange of words, not even of signals, but I feel an understanding pass between us.
After all that’s happened, we may never truly be family again—but for now, we are far from foes. Thaane’s warriors fall in droves before his power. I’m more thankful than any sentences could possibly express. With his reinforcements’ arrival, my uncle brought me a fresh injection of hope. And our locked gazes say more than enough.
Then his eyes suddenly go distant, cloudy. His rapidly flapping wings pull suddenly taut.
My stomach lurches.
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
“If you truly resent your strength, Azarii,” Thaane says, claws piercing deep into the rebel leader’s chest, “then you don’t deserve to have it.”
Azarii’s mouth works, but no sound is coming out, only bright blood bubbling on the quivering lips. His eyes roll back into the empty skull. His body goes rigid, twitching, seizing, and then utterly slack around his killer’s claws. I hear a scream, so loud that it echoes in my eardrums, and barely register that the voice is my own.
“So I will free of you of the burden,” Thaane says, as Azarii’s body thuds with heavy finality into the sand.
I am truly the last of my bloodline now.
From the sky, Thaane turns his attention back to me. “Hello, little princess,” he hisses through his teeth. It does not escape my notice that he no longer calls me a queen. And as forprincess… there is no reverence in it.
Thaane flies headlong into me. My oldest friend, my little brother, the best soldier I ever knew—his triple-clawed feet drive my wings into the sand, his own four wings slicing viciously through the air.
Despite myself, I make up for his monotone with an answer that bleeds emotion, each syllable a stabbing pain. “Hello, old friend.”
With all the strength I can muster, both wings already hurting worse than after the sun serpent attack, I fling him off me, then meet him in the sky, both of us grappling for the advantage, my lower lip dripping blood from the force of my gritted teeth.
We trade blows amidst the searing sunlight, every sound amplified by the immense emptiness of the Daylands’ seared surface.
“There’s still time, you know,” Thaane snarls between punches. “You could lead our army into the Daylands, not make these sands your grave.” Every strike hurts worse than the last, but I’m bigger than my body now, adrenaline embodied, moving faster than thought. “You could bring our people into a golden age.”
My forearm stings from blocking his blows, the impact reverberating down the bone and into my tightly clenched fists. “They’re not so different from us, Thaane.”
“Maybe not.” This time it’s Thaane’s teeth that sink into my arm. I howl, my blood coating his tongue and teeth and lips as he presses in farther, through muscle, down to bone. “But they’re weaker. You could crush them into dust. Reclaim Pagonian history for the nightfolk. Why fight for them, when you’re the strongest of us all?”
Eyes stinging with involuntary tears, I tear my arm free of his fangs. “Because that’s what strength is for.” I drive both fists forward in a rapid flurry, arm hot with blood, my pulse roaring through me like a battle drum. “Do you think I wanted this?” Every blow glances off his lean, honed muscle, but I don’t stop. “Both parents buried? My body mutated beyond recognition? My waking and sleeping both haunted by what I’ve become?”
My knuckles are bleeding now, too, scarlet speckles scattered about the sky. “But this planet needs its monsters, Thaane. It shouldn’t, but it does. Only a monster can hold back the dark. Only a monster can keep the last of the light burning.”
I taste rust and salt. I spit on the sand far below. Thaane’s gaze is lightless, loveless, desperately hungry, not the eyes I’ve known since my youth.
“So I’ll be a monster,” I say. “But notyourmonster.” With all my strength, in a whole-body blast of planetary energy, I hurl Thaane back down toward the ground. “The worst one—so I can be the last one.”
He falls, limbs sprawled, mouth open with no sound coming out. I hear his spine crack against the swirling sand.
The cycle ends here.
I hope to the stars, to sun and shadow alike, perhaps even to the dayfolk’s Dreamgiver, that Thaane will be dead when I land. I hope I won’t have to look him in the eyes when I sever his poisonous presence from the planet. But hope is a fickle, flickering thing. When I land, his spine is indeed twisted, wrecked.
